From Afar
by lexie2
Summary: Sometimes distance can make you feel things closer.A post-Arctic piece which touches briefly on a couple of major events from the current season of SV seen from Lex s point of view. CHLEX. Spoilers: Bride and Stiletto


**A/N:** I have never felt really comfortable writing one-shots, maybe because of my verbose nature when it comes to writing. However, an idea´s been bugging me since last week and I just felt the urge to put pen to paper.

To my regular readers, I promise there´ll be more multi-chapter stories from me in due time- I´ve got three in the works but my muse has been really stressed out lately.

This short fic is a post-Arctic piece and it touches briefly on a couple of major events from the current season of Smallville seen from Lex´s point of view.

**SUMMARY**: Sometimes distance can make you feel things closer

**SPOILERS**: Bride and Stiletto

**AUTHOR**: Lexie

**RATING:** PG-13/15

**PAIRING:** Chlex

"**FROM AFAR"**

From afar things were so much clearer and, at the same time, so much closer. He´d always found that keeping his distance was the best way to shelter himself from pain, heartache and disillusionment. Masks and armours had helped him survive the death and abandonment of those closest and dearest to him. Masks and armours had made him appear strong, resilient and untouchable in a hostile world which had never shown any mercy to Lionel´s first-born. However, that safety net was of no use now for this distance was unlike any he´d known in his twenty-eight years. There was no comfort, no refuge, to be found in being far- not when being far meant having everything so near, when reality could be magnified just by pushing a button.

Months had gone by since that alien ice fortress in the Arctic became his tomb in the eyes of the world. Long painful weeks during which his immune system fought to bring him back to consciousness, excruciating days of physiotherapy and avant-garde surgery to help him walk again. Hundreds of hours he had spent in that hideous orthopaedic bed watching through the artificial eye of a camera as the life that should have been his kept passing by. And the heart which had always found strength in distance broke into a million pieces when witnessing from afar the smile that had once been his addressed to a green boy who would never love her the way he did- without bounds, without bottom, without end, beyond hatred, beyond resentment, beyond pain, beyond the self-imposed distance they´d silently agreed to put between them four years ago... a lifetime ago. There was no balm in distance when he saw the mouth of another graze the lips he craved to taste again, lips that had said the words he had never been able to articulate, words he had yearn to hear addressed to him all of his life.

The boy had come to him and had served his purpose to misdirect the obnoxious cousin. In his juvenile naïveté the kid had believed his impassioned plea had helped save her, when in reality she´d always been safe. He´d for ever keep her safe. The world always expected the worst from Lex - even the petite blonde; and he couldn´t blame her, considering the way he´d treated her the last few years. Where there once was love and trust, he´d planted hate and suspicion. It´d been the hardest decision he´d had to make and it was now making his heart bleed from afar. He´d saved her and, yet, sometimes he hated himself for it, for having brought about such a change in her. He´d seen the glint in her beautiful emerald eyes grow dimmer, the brightness of her luminous smile get cynical and the warmth of her sociable being turn colder. Distance had shaped both him and her; it had turned what used to be common ground into a chasm that he was now experiencing as an abyss from afar.

He saw her get married while immobile in his bed- incapable of barging into that barn he used to frequent in the days of old, when he and Clark were still friends, when all the lies and the misunderstandings didn´t stand in their way. He´d have climbed up those wooden stairs, which he´d sworn never to step on again, just to save her again and to save his soul in the process because he knew the boy would never make her happy just as he was convinced she was the only one who could help him keep little Alexander alive. He´d have opened up to her, stripped his soul bare and put his heart on the line one more time. He´d have told her he´d never stopped loving her. He´d have told her he loved her using the words he´d never been able to utter since the day Lillian passed away. All this he would have done if he weren´t who he was, and if keeping his distance weren´t the only way to keep alive whatever innocence in her the Luthors hadn´t managed to tarnish. There was safety in distance, it was what had kept her alive. And, still, there was no comfort for him in looking from afar.

This morning he walked without the aid of crutches for the first time in months. This morning he watched her once again at a distance and felt guilty at the brief jolt of happiness he experienced when he zoomed in the video taken in the back alley behind The Talon and saw her look at her hands. Crimson tainted the long-fingered hands his body remembered so well, blood that he knew she could have never drawn herself; and he saw her tears and the despair painted on her face as it dawned on her she´d crossed a line she´d never thought herself capable of crossing. And he saw his old self in her at that moment and realised distance was no longer an option. He´d let the hero defeat the Beast while Lex´d be there for her because he understood- he was the only one that could- and he knew that she knew she needed him for neither the farm boy nor the photographer could look at darkness in the eye and accept it the way he did. He was all and everything she had left. And maybe, maybe if God was merciful with him, despite the blood that runs through his veins, she would learn to trust him again.

**THE END**

Read the sequels: "Mirror" and "Lean on Me"


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